butterfly alphabet

I'm back!

My first find is Kjell Sandved's Butterfly Alphabet. It's an amazing collection of photos, composed of letters and numbers found on the wings of butterflies and moths.



Kjell, an author and researcher, was trying to put together a new encyclopedia about animals. He
went to the Smithsonian to buy archive photographs but instead found the silver letter, "F", on the wings of an orange Sphinx moth. The moth was in a cuban cigar box, hidden in a corner of an attic in the National Museum of Natural History. He decided to drop his animal encyclopedia project, and chose to capture all letters and numbers on moth and butterfly wings instead.

There was a problem though: “I had hardly clicked a camera before,” Kjell relates, “and knew nothing about photography.” So he studied, and it took him two years to learn still and movie photography. During this time, he and a friend created customized electronic gear from scraps found in a nearby WWII Navy Yard surplus.

In his quest to find the letters and numbers, he travelled to the forests of the Amazon, the Congo, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines. He survived malaria, snakebite, leeches, numerous jungle ants and rabid dog bites. The easiest letters to find were O, C, D, I, L and M. This is because according to him, "Design elements in nature, tend to go toward symmetry." Asymmetrical letters, like B, H, K, Q, T and X required more time. His biggest challenge is the letter G. He found it on the wing of the Catagramma butterfly. It took him 24 years to complete the collection.

The discovery was featured in the then new Smithsonian magazine. They created posters and slogans for Queen Elizabeth II and Emperor Hirohito during their visits to the institution. It also boosted interest in butterfly gardening and rearing. Today, the poster is also used by some as a tool in teaching the alphabet to children.

Kjell found letters and numbers in other plants and animals as well. Here's a leaf in the shape of the letter F. He found this near a fisherman's hut in Fiji. See the others here.



He says modern man has lost his ability to appreciate the small things in nature. He's worried this is already happening to children. "They have so little access to real things because they're taken away from the land. In the cities, with only concrete and steel, it's worst." Through his butterfly alphabet, a child can learn to read and at the same time, appreciate the incredible beauty of nature.

That is something that never fails to amaze Kjell, even with his decades of experience. There is a line from Roethke printed in his posters: "All finite things reveal infinitude."

"This is one of the deepest statements I can think of that has ever been uttered in science and life," he says. "The more I learn, the more I see that I'm totally ignorant." Our brains, according to him, are like boxes, it can be hard to think outside of what we are comfortable with. So instead of trying to figure it all out, he just watches in amazement. He chases and captures all the world's wonders in his photographs.

Sources:
http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20051116/Feature1.asp
http://www.butterflyalphabet.com/story/index.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_Alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kjell_B._Sandved
http://www.webcitation.org/5XnAYXRQ7